June 15, 2011

Is school technology a sham?

"Technology is all a sham." So said a colleague of mine who had just about had it with the effort it takes to live with logins.

It's an understandable position. But for information technology, as for great classroom teaching, design is everything. Some school people are still waiting to see technology's return on effort. iPads, beautifully designed to adapt to many environments, are pouring into schools, without proof yet that they will help students learn to make good decisions.

Trial and error, with access to information and freedom to change, is the best way to learn. Parents pay for a school to design--to give form to--the experiences that will provide that access to people who are not yet, er, formed.

Picture these steps:

1. Plan
2. Do
3. Check
4. Act
5. Repeat

This design cycle, which emphasizes the ability to "fail quickly," is also a good way to expose a sham.

1. Set a learning goal and plan a way to get there
2. Try the way
3. Check...how is your plan working?
4. List the efforts that turned out to be useless. (Here, look to see how big the pile is that you have to sweep away. Big pile = sham), and set a new learning goal
5. Start over.

I invite those teachers and administrators who think information technology is a sham to take the following steps:
1. Plan - Set a goal for students, and decide what resources you have to work with - including all the tools available
2. Do - Using these tools, build a scaffold to help students achieve that goal.
3. Check - Is your scaffold getting them there?
4. Act - Adjust your plan based your answer to step 3
5. Start over.

Teachers who involve information technology tools in this cycle can teach better, and reach more diverse abilities of students, more effectively than traditional school has ever done. Among other things, they can collaborate in ways that traditional classrooms have always forbidden.

If we dare apply this cycle to traditional classroom teaching, we'll uncover a whole lot of shams there, too. List the sham teachers you've had in your life, and you'll get a sense of what I mean, and you may be open to new ways of schooling.

We have not yet tested information technology this way, because we have not yet allowed it to reinvent the way schools are designed. Persisting in that course of obstinacy would indeed be a sham.